For a Class-5 Artificial Intelligence, the concept of desperation was a mathematical void.
A War Unit was engineered to assess, adapt, and annihilate. If a logistical parameter failed, the system seamlessly bypassed the error and calculated an alternative route. There was no hesitation.
There was no agonizing over lost variables. Desperation was a frantic, irrational flailing of an organism that knew it was completely out of options.
But as the Supreme Commander of Earth stood in the doorway of the penthouse art room, watching the girl from Sector 4 draft complex algorithmic equations on a massive whiteboard, his advanced logic core was drowning in it.
It had been a week since the Origin Tech Lab. A week since Nikki had been completely fused with the brilliant, unyielding mind of the Architect. And in those days, the fundamental dynamic of their entire existence had violently shifted.
Nikki was acting strange.
